


one day the blood won't flow so gladly

by MousselineSerieuse



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Background Mai/Zuko - Freeform, Gen, Non-explicit underage sex, Pre-Canon, The Royal Fire Academy for Girls, Toxic Friendships, how to develop your coping mechanisms without really trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:15:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MousselineSerieuse/pseuds/MousselineSerieuse
Summary: Sometimes Ty Lee wonders if they're the only ones who reallyknowabout Azula.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	one day the blood won't flow so gladly

There’s a girl doing cartwheels down the middle of the school courtyard, and Mai and Azula sit under the sandalwood tree and watch her.

“Who _is_ that?” Azula asks.

Mai takes a bite out of her apple. The sun is at its highest point, and she can hear her mother’s voice in her head, reminding her not to ruin her complexion. “One of the Ty sisters,” she says.

Azula’s elbow digs sharply into her side. “Find out which one."

* * *

“You’re Ty Lee, right?”

Ty Lee isn’t sure what’s more surprising: that the voice belongs to that serious-looking girl with the ribbons who always follows the princess around, or that she actually got Ty Lee’s name right.

“Yes?”

“I’m Mai,” says the girl with the ribbons. “Azula wants me to ask you to have lunch with us.”

Ty Lee looks past Mai’s shoulder. The princess is sitting alone on the steps that lead up to the main building, hugging her knees to her chest, watching them. When her eyes catch Ty Lee's, she actually _smiles_.

“Um, sure,” says Ty Lee, trying to make it sound like this isn’t a big deal for her at all. “That—sounds fun!” She’s pretty sure that none of her sisters have ever been invited to have lunch with Princess Azula. In fact, she's _really_ sure.

“Great,” says Mai flatly. She turns to go, but stops. “Wait. What fruit did you get?”

Ty Lee looks down at her lunch tray. “Rambutan.”

“Trade with her,” says Mai, and she’s halfway back to the princess before Ty Lee realizes she’s expected to follow.

* * *

“Isn’t this _incredible_?”

Ty Lee’s voice practically vibrates with enthusiasm. The servants have set their beds up in one of the gardens, the trees around them hung with red silk and flickering little candles. The low table in front of them is piled with mochi and freshly-cut fruit and the massive bowl of fire flakes Mai always specifically requests. Above them, falling stars streak across the sky, blinking in and out of existence next to a sliver of a moon. Azula is— _somewhere_. Probably not for long.

“It’s just stars,” Mai says. Privately, she thinks that she might be excited, too, if her parents lived out in the provinces and she had to spend every weekend at school until Azula invited her to the palace.

Ty Lee’s legs are stretched out in front of her, and Mai can see the bruise on her shin from when Azula tripped her earlier that afternoon, right as she was landing a back handspring. She’s smiling through it, and Mai wonders if Azula is going to keep her. There have been other girls—from school, mostly—who Azula picked out because she thought they might be _interesting_ and then abandoned when she decided they weren’t.

Mai’s known Azula for years, since they were both babies, and she’s long since stopped wondering why Azula decided to keep _her._

“You know, Ty Lum said your aura was ugly, but I don’t think it is. It’s sort of a reddish purple, and it only gets _really_ black when it’s your turn to read in lyric verse.”

Mai sits up on her elbows and says: “ _What?_ ”

* * *

“Look at her,” says Azula. “She’s _blushing_.”

Ty Lee obediently looks. Mai _is_ blushing—she can see it from all the way across the turtleduck pond—and Zuko looks sort of flustered, too, helping her untangle the kite from the night-jasmine bushes. It’s kind of sweet, actually. Mai is usually _so_ reserved, you would never expect her get so silly around Azula’s brother.

“Aw, Azula! They _like_ each other. Isn’t it—”

“Watch this.”

Five minutes later, Mai is holding the singed remains of Azula’s kite, and Ty Lee is watching Zuko’s head recede back toward the gallery, smoke practically rising from his shoulders.

Azula laughs. Ty Lee laughs, too. It _is_ funny, in a way. He looks so _furious_.

She reminds herself that she doesn’t know what it’s like, after all, to have a brother.

* * *

Ty Lee isn’t at dinner, and Mai finds her at her desk surrounded by half-used inksticks and crumpled-up pieces of paper. “I thought you finished the calligraphy homework.”

“I _did._ ” Her voice warbles a little, like she might be close to tears.

“Oh. Can’t you just copy yours, then? That’s what I usually do.”

Ty Lee pushes a stray lock of hair out of her face, leaving a streak of ink above her left eye. “I _can’t_ , Mai. Mine is _so bad_. And I don’t care if it’s just me, but—I don’t know why she even wanted me to do it. _You’re_ one who’s good at this.”

Mai slides the door closed behind her. Ty Lee looks up again, frantic. “She’s not still here, is she?”

“No. She went home early tonight. I think something happened.”

“Like what?”

“ _I_ don’t know. News from Ba Sing Se, I think.”

Ty Lee brightens. “What if the Earth King finally surrendered to Azula’s uncle? Do you think they’d cancel classes tomorrow?”

“Ugh, no. There would probably just be an _assembly_.”

Ty Lee frowns. Mai sighs. “Here. Give me a brush.”

“But Mai—”

“I’ll start on line three. You take above that. And just go slowly, okay? It takes more time if you rush through it and then have to start over.”

“But she told me to do it,” Ty Lee insists. “What if she finds out?”

“Are you going to tell her?”

Ty Lee is quiet for a moment. Then she springs up from her chair and throws her arms around Mai. “Thank you,” she says. “You know, you _are_ nice, even if you don’t want people to think—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” says Mai. “Just pass me the paper.”

* * *

Ty Lee’s parents come up for the coronation.

It’s unsettling somehow to see them in the capital instead of at home—her father goes around talking loudly about komodo-rhino breeding, and her mother apparently doesn’t have a single dress that’s less than two years out of style. Ty Lee is embarrassed to be embarrassed by them. Azula tells her it doesn’t matter: she’s not one of them, not anymore.

Still, she has to sit with her family at the back of the throne room, one of seven identical daughters wearing seven identical hair ribbons. At least it isn’t difficult to sneak away during the Oath to the Eternal Flame. She slips along one of the side passages and ends up next to Mai.

Mai’s hair is studded with sun-shaped gold pins, glistening in the torchlight like little fires. Her eyes are focused respectfully forward, and she gives no outward indication that she knows Ty Lee is there.

“You look pretty,” Ty Lee whispers during a lull in the chanting.

“Thanks,” says Mai, without changing her expression.

Up on the dais, Azula glances over at them, and the corner of her mouth turns up, letting them know that she sees them. She and Zuko sit side by side, with a conspicuous absence behind them where their mother should be.

“Is it true, then?” Ty Lee asks. “About the contract?”

“How should I know?”

“It’s your betrothal.”

Mai shrugs, imperceptibly. “I guess they’re trying.”

She isn’t looking but she can _sense_ the warmth creeping into Mai’s cheeks. Ty Lee thinks that if this betrothal happens—if things fall a certain way—Mai could be Fire Lady. She would outrank _Azula,_ then. And Ty Lee can’t imagine that Azula would take that lightly, no matter how things fall.

As Fire Lord Ozai takes the throne for the first time, Ty Lee wonders if anyone else knows this about Azula. Ty Lee’s parents definitely don’t. For them, the throne is an implied threat and a picture in a shrine, and it doesn’t really matter that much who sits on it. Probably even Mai’s parents don’t know, with all their pageantry and their attempts to push Mai and Zuko together, like _that’s_ the main problem. Maybe not even the Fire Lord.

In fact, Ty Lee thinks that maybe out of all the people in this room—the admirals and the ministers and the nobles, all of them kneeling and bowing and kowtowing in ritual order—she and Mai are the only ones who _know_ , really, about Azula and what she would do. What she _can_ do, if she wants.

It terrifies her, a little bit. It feels a little bit like power.

* * *

It’s the third week back from summer recess when it happens, which means that everyone has more or less exhausted topics related to country houses and older sisters’ weddings and trips to Ember Island. So when the news begins to creep in— _war meeting_ — _challenged the general_ — _Agni Kai_ —there isn’t anything to do except talk about it.

Mai doesn’t know more than anyone else, but she’s willing to let people think that she does. It’s just like Zuko to speak out of turn, to do something inadvisable on the spur of the moment, and she suspects—although she makes no attempt to find out—that he did it because he felt it was _right_. No escape, then. Parents have to discipline their children, she knows that, and thirteen is old enough for an honor duel, but there’s an edge of uncertainty to the situation that troubles her. She just wants it to be over, if only so that everyone will stop whispering.

She tries to forget about the way Azula smiled at her when she climbed into the palanquin that afternoon, the way Azula always smiles when she has a particularly amusing secret.

She watches Ty Lee practice her layout series in the gallery after lights out, flicking her penknife open and closed. Without Azula they have to carry candles in, but they can slip through the empty corridors easily enough. Besides, it’s been a long time since the headmistress has attempted to reprimand any of them, for anything.

In the silence that follows her fourth stuck landing in a row, Ty Lee stops and says, “I’m thinking about joining the circus.”

“The _circus_ ,” says Mai. “That’s a new one.”

“What? You don’t think they would take me?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever even been to a circus. Circuses are not a _ladylike pastime_ ,” she says, giving a passable impression of her mother. “I guess there were fire-jugglers at the Equinox Festival that one time we snuck out. Does that count?”

“Maybe I’ll be an actress instead. Or a dancer!”

“You could get a job at the Boiling Rock,” Mai suggests. “I could talk to my uncle.”

Ty Lee launches herself forward, executes three front handsprings, completes a half twist on the last one, and catches herself in a handstand. “But then I would only be there because I know _you_ , not because I was actually good at…prison-guarding.”

_So what_ , Mai wants to say, but Ty Lee has always had a desire to stand on her own, to be counted as an individual, to do something other than what everyone else is doing even as she leans the hardest on ideas like “friendship” and “togetherness.” Mai is almost jealous of it sometimes, that flexibility, that freedom of movement.

It’s just as likely that Ty Lee’s parents will arrange a betrothal for her right out of school, but Mai decides not to point that out. She flicks her knife open again and launches it upward, listening for the resounding _thud_ of the blade embedding itself into the roof carving.

“Azula said she would appoint me to her personal bodyguard, and then we can go everywhere together.” Ty Lee breaks her stance and steps forward, stretching her wrists out. “She was in a _really_ good mood today. Her aura was this really bright orangey-red color all through history this afternoon.”

Mai wishes she had her knife back so she could have something to do with her hands. “Well, it’s Zuko. You know how they are.”

“Yeah. It’s just—she really hates him, you know?” She casts Mai a sideways glance. “Like, I fight with my sisters all the time, about stupid things. And I don’t even _like_ them, really—like, I don’t spend time with them unless I have to—but I don’t—it just feels _different,_ with them.”

Mai tilts her head back. She isn’t at all certain that the things she says to Ty Lee won’t ultimately make their way back to Azula, whether deliberately or by accident. But then, from that angle, it’s stupid of Ty Lee to be talking to her about this at all.

“I mean, I wouldn’t know, would I?” she says, choosing her words carefully. “Their father _is_ the Fire Lord. They have responsibilities that we don’t.”

“You sound like Madam Ko in civics.”

“I wasn’t finished.” She allows herself the luxury of a sigh. “I think—yes. She does hate him. And I understand it, sort of, but I’m also not totally sure why.”

“ _You_ don’t hate him.”

Mai stiffens. “Do you?”

Ty Lee shrugs. “Maybe. Not really. No.”

There are more things they could say—Mai can _feel_ them, practically, hanging in the air between them—but she suddenly doesn’t want to. It feels like they’ve said too much already, and to keep talking would take them onto uncertain ground. Ty Lee seems to agree, because she launches into another series without further preamble.

“I’m tired,” says Mai when she finishes. “I think I’m going to bed.”

“One more time,” says Ty Lee insistently. “Then let’s go. And tell me if my toes aren’t pointed.”

“Fine.” The candlelight flickers, Mai settles in against the wall, and Ty Lee takes up her starting position once again.

* * *

“You should have been there,” Azula is saying, and Ty Lee takes note of every blade of grass, every roof tile, every face turned curiously toward them in their usual place on the steps. Azula hasn’t even changed into her school clothes; she’s still wearing the gold-trimmed armor required of a Royal Family member on ceremonial occasions. The sun is beating down overhead, and absolutely everyone is watching.

“Banished,” says Mai slowly. Her face is white, and her knuckles are white, too, where she clenches her hand around the railing. “Why _?_ ”

Her voice cracks a little on the _why_ , and Azula smiles. “Oh, I don’t know. For cowardice? For dishonor? For being a complete _failure_ in everything he’s ever done? The possibilities are endless.” Her chin jerks up sharply. “Don’t you agree, Ty Lee?”

Ty Lee forms the words without thinking about them. (“Of course, Azula!”) She thinks about it ( _his father_ ), and what would she have done if it had been her, what would Azula do. Some first-year inches closer, trying to hang on to what they’re saying. She watches the veil come down over Mai’s face, watches her rearrange her posture minutely so that she looks calm and undisturbed, and it’s like—

It’s like something just _snaps._

* * *

“A _shurikenjutsu_ instructor.”

“Yes.”

Mai’s mother shifts in her seat, her hand coming up instinctively to cover her belly—not noticeably swollen yet, but soon. “It just doesn’t seem like an appropriate subject.”

“You asked me what I wanted for my birthday,” says Mai. “That’s what I want.”

Mai’s father, as usual, looks like he’s trying to decide whether his presence is really necessary here. Her earliest memories of them are like this: the two of them side by side in front of her, formally arranged, as if she were just another petitioner. It used to bother her to be treated like a supplicant, but lately nothing has been bothering her very much anymore.

“Perhaps you could take lessons in something else. Dancing, maybe. Lady Lan’s daughters give the most charming recitals, and I’m certain she could be persuaded to teach you.”

Mai feels a flash of irritation, which she does not show. Her parents have never denied her anything that could be bought, and there’s something cold and obstinate in her that refuses to let them start now.

“I’ve already written to Uncle about it,” she says. “He knows someone he recommends, and it could all be done very discreetly. But if you _really_ don’t want to be involved with it, I could always ask Azula. She likes having people to spar with, and I’m sure there’s someone in the Imperial Firebenders who can teach me.”

Mai watches the flash of horror cross her mother’s features—probably envisioning her demure, gently-raised daughter brawling publicly with common guardsmen—and she knows she’s won. She feels only a vague satisfaction. She feels sealed off, separate from everything, like she’s experiencing things through water or through glass. She feels untouchable.

She doesn’t mind it, living this way. It’s easy.

She gets back to her room, rips the knife out of the doorjamb, throws it again.

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, for what must be the hundredth time. His hands are warm, and Ty Lee wonders if he might be a firebender—people out in the villages will hide it, sometimes, to avoid the draft.

“I’m sure,” says Ty Lee, stepping back. “Now take off your shirt.”

Her ears are still ringing with the sound of her father’s voice, locked up in his study with the neighbor from down the coast. The neighbor whose wife died last winter—no children—a legacy to think of. She can still see his palanquin retreating down the long drive, remembers the way he looked over them, the daughters, all lined up together to see the visitor off.

The odds are one in seven, but Ty Lee isn’t taking them.

The stable boy looks at her with awe in his eyes while she unravels her braid. He’s handsome enough, broad-shouldered in the way that comes from physical labor, and it amazes her how much she doesn’t care about him.

_Not now_ , she thinks, standing in this little room at the back of her father’s stable, with the light dappling her bare feet. _Not ever_. She closes the distance between them and slides her hand up into his hair.

“We could both get in trouble,” he says, even as he leans toward her. There’s an adrenaline to this, she thinks, an exhilaration not unlike the kind that comes from doing cartwheels down the edge of the palace roof. A sense that anything is possible.

“I don’t care,” she says. “Do it anyway,” and she doesn’t even _sound_ like herself, she sounds like—

* * *

_You’re a coward_ , Mai tells herself, crumpling Ty Lee’s note in her hand. She wants to burn it—almost wishes she could generate fire for this purpose specifically—but Azula will probably want to see it, if only to cross-reference it against her own.

_I know you didn’t think I would actually do it, but I am. Please don’t be upset with me. I’m going to miss you so much!_

It’s just like Ty Lee, she thinks, to do something so unimaginably daring—to run off leaving everything behind her, all bridges burned, no money and no family and no _Azula_ —and still worry about whether or not people are upset with her.

Mai hates school, hates her parents, hates the well-connected young men they’re beginning to push on her in increasingly larger numbers, but she doesn’t leave. She can’t. She has no confidence in her ability to recreate her life the way Ty Lee apparently has. She doesn’t know how to be anyone other than herself.

So she stays, and sinks into herself. She fills the wall with knives where Ty Lee’s bed used to be. She sneaks a bottle of sake from her father’s cellar into her dormitory, just to prove that she can, and she and Azula skip an _ikebana_ lesson to drink it on the Academy roof. She learns to hit targets with accuracy and precision from a distance of sixty feet. Results are repeatable, and it feels like _security_ in a way that nothing else does anymore.

Her father’s political career soars, helped along by his daughter’s closeness to the Royal Family. When Azula tells her, confidentially, that he’s going to be appointed governor of the new colony in the Earth Kingdom, Mai can’t bring herself to do more than sigh.

* * *

“I know who you are.”

Ty Lee almost falters at that, right at the end of her routine. Still, she keeps her balance. She’s used to working through distractions.

“You’re just another rich girl,” sаys the lion-vulture tamer, folding her arms across her chest. “Learned those flips in a gymnastics class somewhere. Ran away from home, huh?”

“That’s right!” Ty Lee says. She keeps her voice bright, because there's no point in denying _that_.

“I’ve seen plenty of ‘em. Colony brats, mainly. Admirals' daughters, that kind of thing." Her eyes narrow. _"You,_ though—you’re from the Caldera, aren’t you?”

Ty Lee lowers both feet to the ground. “I went to school there.”

“ _School,_ ” the girl snorts, as if the idea itself were a joke. But she's softening, a little—opening up, Ty Lee thinks. You can see it in her shoulders. “What are you running from, anyway? Arranged marriage?” 

Something flashes through Ty Lee's mind. A memory. Shadows, the flick of a blade, cartwheels one right after the other, orange flames. Blue ones.

She smiles. “Something like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I recently rewatched A:tLA for the first time in over a decade, and I forgot how much I loved this tragic imperialist girl gang. Azula's type-A personality! Mai's rich-kid apathy! Ty Lee's extremely brief (?) circus career! It's like Mean Girls + Game of Thrones + everyone is extremely good at martial arts.
> 
> Anyway, my feeling is that Mai's family are new-money, hyper-ambitious, social-climbing aristocracy, and Ty Lee's family are old-money, country-house, not-actually-that-much-money-anymore-but-who-cares aristocracy who are eccentric in ways that feel sort of glamorous but still extremely weird. What a traumatic childhood they have! I love them so much.


End file.
